How We Earned the Cadette/Senior Programming Robots Badge

I have a Girl Scout Cadette and Senior, which is not as convenient as when I had two Cadettes. That one year that I had two Cadettes I got VERY used to leading the exact same badge at--gasp!--the exact same time... and then Will had to go and Bridge to Girl Scout Senior and mess up all my efficient, efficient lesson plans.

Tangent: I LOVE having my kids earn retired IPs for the very reason that IPs are CSA level so I can still lead the exact same badge at the exact same time--bliss! Same thing with fun patches that have requirement to "earn" them; we do a lot of those (Hello, Wildflowers of Ohio!).

The kids now mostly earn badges separately--Syd just finished earning the Cadette Digital Movie Maker badge, entirely independently!--or, call the Badge Police because I'll have Syd earn Senior badges along with Will, the brand-new Girl Scout Senior Outdoor Art Expert badge that they both now proudly wear being my case in point. But I've also found that many of the newer Girl Scout badges are so closely aligned that I really could lead Syd through the Cadette Programming Robots badge at the same time, and with many of the same experiences, as Will had when I led her through the Senior Programming Robots badge.

And so that's what we did! Both kids did all of the activities, even if one was specifically a Senior requirement or a Cadette requirement, and because I also used this as a homeschool STEM study, I added in a LOT more content. In fact, Will is using our work for the three Senior Robotics badges as the one-credit course, Topics in STEM: Robotics and Programming, for her high school transcript. If she adds on the Senior Coding for Good badges, or the Ambassador Think Like a Programmer Journey this summer (which she might!), I'll add to this syllabus and boost it up to a two-credit course.

Cadette Programming Robots Step 1/Senior Programming Robots Step 1: Learn about robots. 

For this step, I lectured the kids about the Sense-Think-Act definition of a robot, and had them do some additional reading, in particular Chapter 1 I'm about to start with the Amazon Affiliate links. If you click through to Amazon using one and end up buying something, Amazon does NOT charge you anything extra, but sometimes they pay me 1.5 cents every year or so of Robotics: Discover the Science and Technology of the Future. This book is a little young for a Cadette and a Senior, but I often use nonfiction books below the kids' reading level to introduce brand-new concepts. Do the easy book first, then some hands-on stuff, then some harder books, and then you're really off and running.

So after the easy book comes some hands-on stuff! Throughout this study, we did a LOT of hands-on work with machines and devices of all kinds, both robots and non-robots. These are the spines of our study as much as the Programming Robots lesson outlines in the Girl Scout Volunteer Toolkit are.

And yes, the idea of having multiple spines renders the metaphor nonsensical, but I can't think of another way to put it!

In Step 1, then, I introduced these two machines to our study:



Welcome, Sphero and Bee-Bot!

Here's another tangent: out of all the many robots and devices and machines and circuits that we used in earning this badge, the only thing that I had to buy was, of all things, the syringes and tubing to make the least sophisticated piece of equipment in the entire unit, the cardboard hydraulic arm. Bee-Bot, Ozobot, and the littleBits came from the IU Library, we already owned the Snap Circuits, Sphero came via a grant from the Civil Air Patrol, and a publicist sent me the Micro:Bot for free to review. It takes a village to raise a robotics engineer!

With their knowledge of Sense-Think-Act, the kids were then tasked with creating diagrams to show how Sphero and Bee-Bot embody the three-part definition of a robot. I sat back and waited for the inevitable moment when the kid assigned to Bee-Bot began to struggle. It went something like this:

"Umm... I don't think Bee-Bot has any sensors."
"I think you're correct."
"But how can it be a robot without sensors?"
"You tell me."
"............. it's not a robot?"

And there we have our first big revelation, and the lens through which the kids viewed the entire rest of our study: What is the difference between a robot and a non-robot? What can you add to a non-robot to make it a robot? Are there times when a robot turns into a non-robot?

Having some guiding questions makes the study more interesting, meaningful, and memorable.

After the kids had presented their diagrams, this is another easy nonfiction that reinforces the definition specifically with Sphero. If Sense-Think-Act wasn't crystal clear before, it will be after this book!



On another day, I gave each kid one of the Robot Challenge Cards from the Volunteer Toolkit. Each kid had to brainstorm the characteristics that a robot would need to meet each challenge, and then they had to research online to find a video of a real robot meeting their challenge. Syd's challenge was a robot that could teach preschool children, and she found this video of engineers figuring out how to develop a robot that can assist teaching children a foreign language:



Part of our discussion of this video is that the robot doesn't really seem that great, but engineering is a process, right? You might have your dream list of what the perfect robotic preschool teacher would do, but whatever that is, you've got to start with this goofy little dude.

Will liked her real-life delivery robot a lot better:



It really did almost run over that dog, though.

After this lesson, since we'd been talking more about design, I assigned the kids Chapter 2, "Housing: Robot Bodies," in Robotics: Discover the Science and Technology of the Future.

Cadette Programming Robots Step 2: Build a robot part: simple sensors

After a lecture on circuits, here is where we began to play with littleBits! littleBits are absolutely astounding, I can't say enough about them, and the kids LOVED them.

I wrote about how we used littleBits here, including learning how to assemble a circuit, building several circuits and diagramming them (including both kids' favorite game called Build the Most Obnoxious Circuit Possible), and learning about and then building logic gates.

On a different day,  the kids built a littleBits circuit that utilized a pressure sensor, and then used the instructions in the Volunteer Toolkit, along with an LED, copper tape, and paper, to build an old-school paper model of a touch sensor. Because littleBits are great, but you've also got to know how to muscle a circuit together with old Christmas lights and craft supplies, don't you know?

Cadette Programming Robots Step 3: Build a box model robot with sensors.

For this activity, I gave each kid a small cardboard box, then put her in charge of building a model of a robot that could perform a specific task or solve a specific problem. The model should show a working example of at least one sensor that the robot would utilize. Will made a pretty good stab at creating a perpetual motion machine by building a littleBits circuit that connected a sound sensor with an effector that made noise, and Syd tried to figure out how to broadcast instructions over the radio to an effector in a different room so she could prank someone.

Each robot's task, clearly, was to be as obnoxious as possible!

On another day, I had the kids practice making even more sensors using Snap Circuits. I thought the kids would be interested in using the instructions to create more complicated circuits than they could figure out with littleBits, but again, they mostly tried to make obnoxious things. At least they have a shared mission!

Senior Programming Robots Step 2: Build a robot part: robot arm.

Matt helped the kids build a working model of a hydraulic arm out of cardboard Girl Scout cookie cases (of course!), syringes, and tubing. It worked, but even though Will spent a lot of extra time troubleshooting and problem-solving, she never could get it to work perfectly, and it's definitely a project that I'd be interested in trying again sometime.

Perhaps when Syd earns the Senior Programming Robots badge!

Senior Programming Robots Step 3: Learn how robot systems work together.

For this step, the kids used the micro:bit and micro:bot kits that we were given by a publicist. The kids worked together to build an ArtBot and troubleshoot it to do what they wanted it to do--

--which is apparently draw endless circles, lol. But, hey--that's the task they wanted the bot to perform!

On a different day, the kids made a list of all of the robots and machines and devices that we'd handled so far during this study, and I tasked them with 1) organizing the five main parts of a robot within the three-part definition of a robot, and 2) identifying and organizing all the parts of every device we've explored to fit within those labels and definitions. So the kids had to not only figure out if, say, a robot's housing is part of Sense, Think, or Act (it's part of Act), but also what each device's housing is. Housing is easy, but effectors were a little harder to pin down sometimes, and the sensors actually gave the kids the most trouble, especially with Sphero. Syd was stumped for a while, for instance, about what kind of sensor Sphero's gyroscope could possibly be. I mean, sure, it's what keeps Sphero upright, but how is that a sensor?

To get past that, it can sometimes help to figure out if there's a correlating sensors in humans. Syd decided that, yes, humans can also keep themselves upright, and that's because they can feel gravity. We may use our inner ear bones instead of a gyroscope, but they're both sensors!

And then Syd had a lightbulb moment about robot sensors/human senses, and I was proud.

Syd was in charge of all visual displays for their STEM Fair presentation, so here are some of her displays of the identification and categorization that the kids did:

Micro:bot is a special case; its controller does have the components to add sensors to, but this wasn't utilized for ArtBot, which is technically what the kids were evaluating:

This way of categorizing makes it really easy to see which machines are robots and which aren't.

Cadette Programming Robots Step 4/Senior Programming Robots Step 4: Learn about programming.

By this step, both kids HAVE done plenty of  work programming, but we haven't explicitly studied all that entails. That deficit ends now!

I gave the kids the Robot Task Sheets from the Volunteer Toolkit and asked each kid to choose a robot task, brainstorm everything that they thought a robot would need to be able to complete that task, and then research videos of real robots completing that task. Syd chose a robot that could sort building blocks, and found several good videos of robots trying this:

I especially like that she found videos of very different robots completing this task in very different ways!

Will struggled quite a bit to find videos of a robot that could change the batteries in a flashlight, so I suggested that instead she find examples of robots utilizing fine motor skills to perform specific tasks. And then she found us this video, which is the BEST ROBOT VIDEO EVER:

It's possible that we watch this video every day. It's VERY relevant to our robot study!

On another day, I gave the kids a lecture on computer programs and algorithms, and made the kids do the exact same funny as hell activity that I remember doing at Syd's age in my junior high computer class. You know, the one taught by the basketball coach who'd rather be on the basketball court than in the computer classroom with a bunch of nerdy nerds? Yeah, that class.

What you do is tell the kid to write you step-by-step instructions for doing something simple, like picking up a book and putting in the table or walking across the room and sitting in a chair. Then, the kid reads out the instructions, and you perform them in such a way that every single logical flaw is pointed out in humorous detail, to the kid's frustration and outrage. Syd could NOT BELIEVE that I wouldn't pick the book up further than a half-inch without an explicit instruction, and she got so mad when she finally wrote instructions detailed enough that I picked the book all the way up but then just dropped it again--LIKE SHE TOLD ME TO.

It was awesome.

She only forgave me later when Will was around and I gave Will the same assignment, then assigned Syd to perform Will's instructions. Syd already has the superpower of taking every single dang thing as literally as possible, and Will could not even get Syd up off of the dang couch no matter how hard she tried. At one point Syd did roll off the couch at Will's instructions, but then just lay there twitching and Will could not, for the life of her, figure out how to get her on her feet.

After that, programming the Ozobot Bit was a cinch!

Here's all the work that the kids did with Ozobot Bit for this badge step. They had a LOT of fun with it, and it was a refreshing change of pace from some of the other hard-core builds that they'd been doing.

We did a lot, lot, LOT of work with this badge step already, but nevertheless, I wanted the kids to have some more time exploring the Scratch programming language. They'd been using block programming for micro:bot and Sphero quite a bit by this time, but there's much more than that to do with Scratch, and it's nice to get a chance to really dive into what it can do. So on a separate day I gave each kid the independent assignment, as part of that day's schoolwork, to spend some time on Scratch playing and programming. The kids used to be really into Scratch, so this was a fun assignment and many little animations were made.

I also had a lot of books on hand in case either kid wanted inspiration or step-by-step instructions:

Cadette Programming Robots Step 5/Senior Programming Robots Step 5: Write a program for a robot.

The secret that I kept from the kids is that they had already completed this step several times over, mwa-ha-ha! But since at this point we were preparing in earnest for the upcoming STEM Fair (during which the kids would complete several steps of the Showcasing Robots badge for their levels!), I wanted them to have a workable program for each of the robots and machines that we'd been studying so far. Over the course of the unit, they had created a complete, workable program for micro:bot and Ozobot Bit, but had mostly explored and played with Bee-Bot and Sphero.

Therefore, the kids' assignment for Step 5 of the Programming Robots badge was to write and troubleshoot one program for Sphero and one program for Bee-Bot. Here's the specific assignment and the work that the kids did with Bee-Bot. The kids demonstrated their programs for Bee-Bot and Sphero at the STEM Fair, although most of the kids found it more fun to use Sphero with the remote control than with a program:

And to be fair, controlling Sphero by remote control is MY favorite thing, too!

And that's Programming Robots! We'll be working through the Cadette/Senior Designing Robots badge next, while simultaneously completing the remaining steps of the Cadette/Senior Showcasing Robots badge as we come across the right opportunities. Our only deadline is October 2020, when both kids Bridge and instead of a Cadette and a Senior I'll have a Senior and an AMBASSADOR!!!

Here are some of the other resources that we used with this unit of study:

P.S. Want to follow along with more of our Girl Scout hijinks and sneakily educational activities? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

My Kid Went to Space Camp on an Academic Scholarship

The other day I was driving Will to the library, and as one does when one finally has one's teenager trapped in a small, enclosed space with one, we were discussing her recent accomplishments and her plans for the future. What she might want to study in college. Where she might want to volunteer next semester. What section of the public library she's going to read next. That sort of thing.

I was cracking her up by telling her that I could not stop telling people that she had just been to Space Camp. And more than that, every time I mentioned it, I also felt like I had to announce, in the same breath, that she had gone because she'd earned an academic scholarship.

I couldn't seem to just tell people that she'd gone to Space Camp. I had to mention that she'd also earned a scholarship. And I couldn't seem to just say that she'd earned a scholarship. I had to make sure that everyone knew that it was an ACADEMIC scholarship.

Seriously, I could not stop telling people this.

It was so bad that I found myself informing strangers. I don't even talk to strangers if I can help it normally, and yet here I was, talking to strangers, solely to work into the conversation the fact that my child, my special snowflake, had gone to Space Camp on an academic scholarship. The #mombrag is strong with this one, I'm afraid I must admit.

Here, I'll do it to you: MY KID WENT TO SPACE CAMP! ON AN ACADEMIC SCHOLARSHIP!

But if you knew how hard she worked for this scholarship, you'd understand a little better. Because this kid worked HARD! She wrote a research essay on a topic of the camp's choosing. She wrote a personal essay. She designed an original science experiment, performed that experiment (about five times, because it kept messing up), documented that experiment, and wrote up her methods and conclusions, with graphs. She submitted her SAT scores, and thank goodness that studying for and taking the SAT had been an intense and crazy project that she'd completed BEFORE she got the idea about Space Camp. She designed an original mission patch that represented her life and wrote an essay about it. She solicited two letters of reference from mentor adults. It was so much work that she wanted to give up several times. Each time I'd encourage her with something like, "You said you really wanted to do this," or "You've already worked so hard; it would be a shame to drop it now," or, the one that worked the best because my kid is an introvert, "Well, *I* don't care if you finish or not, but if you don't finish, you're going to need to tell the people who wrote your letters of reference that you're not applying after all, or otherwise they'll expect to hear from you about whether or not you got in."

She finished. It was one of the hardest things she's ever done, but she finished.

And four months later, she found out that she'd earned a full scholarship. My heart can't handle how excited and happy I've been for her ever since that day. You wouldn't believe how many ways I've found to work this information into a completely irrelevant conversation with strangers.

A couple of weeks ago, her dad drove her down to the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama (which is a stroke of good luck for us, as it's *only* a six-hour drive. That same week, Space Camp had trainees from five other countries, 42 US states, and two US territories).

Here she is!

Will is more interested in aerospace than outer space, so she chose to use her scholarship to attend Aviation Challenge Mach II. It's a hands-on aerospace/aviation camp, with some military overtones because the military is the main outlet for this kind of aviation. Like, she managed to watch Top Gun twice while she was there. That kind of thing.

The camp's photo package that I paid good money for did not impress me with the quantity/quality of photos that I ended up with from camp, but to be fair, if I'd relied on the kid to take the photos I'd have ended up with zero photos, so there you go. As it is, though, out of a full five days of going hard with her teammates doing all kinds of things (what, I'm not 100% clear about, as I also have the kind of kid who not only doesn't take photos, but also doesn't talk much, either, and there are only so many leading questions you can ask about something you weren't there for, sigh...), here are my two photos of camp, both of the hoist used during the water rescue after a helicopter crash:

Tangentially, I've actually emailed customer service, because surely out of five days of camp they have some other photos of my kid. Stay tuned!

Another cool thing about Aviation Challenge is that they treat all the trainees not like astronauts, as at the Space Camp, but as pilots. If you're a pilot, you go by a call sign. My kid's call sign?

Wizard.

Yep, everyone called my kid Wizard all week. It might seem less cool if you know it's because she loves the Young Wizards series, by Diane Duane, but I don't know. I think it makes it even more cool!

For most of that week, then, Syd got to pretend that she was an only child. We did all her favorite things, and on our last night, had a meal that consisted entirely of foods that she disliked sharing with her sister. But the night before Will's graduation from Space Camp, we booked it back down to Alabama, and there we were, bright and early the next morning, ready to see our girl again!

Random mural on the side of a liquor store in Huntsville:

Random rocket toy that I wasn't sure we'd be able to get Syd back out of without calling in the fire department:

Not-so-random family, including Syd's doll, Zelda, in her very own flight suit:

And finally, there's our girl!

Their commencement speech was given by a real, live astronaut, Robert Gibson! The kids were probably also excited by the fact that he's also a Top Gun graduate and former fighter pilot, but I'm all about the astronauts:

 Here's my kid, shaking hands with an astronaut:

 After Will's graduation, we did some sightseeing on the Aviation Challenge grounds. Here's the main component of the water rescue activities:

That big barrel is a helicopter airframe that the trainees are dropped into the water while sitting inside so that they can practice emergency water landings and water rescues. The Mach III trainees also zipline down from that helicopter at the top of the structure to practice water landings by parachute:

This is Will's dorm:

This is Zelda, pretending that she went to Aviation Challenge, too:

Part of the extreme awesomeness of the Aviation Challenge campus is the large number of aircraft that they have hanging around it:

Here's our brand-new graduate!

Will told us that this jet was used to film Top Gun. She watched it twice while at camp, remember? I have probably seen it 50 times...

After Will's graduation, we had the rest of the day to explore the US Space and Rocket Center. You probably don't know this, but I attended Space Camp, too, as a kid (though NOT with an academic scholarship!), so I had to visit my old stomping grounds:

Notice how well I'm representing, wearing my 28-year-old Space Academy T-shirt. I wore that shirt until just a few years ago, when it became clear that it was about to fall apart any second. I kept it safe, though, and pulled it back out for this visit, although I'm wearing a  second shirt underneath it, because I'm still pretty sure it's about to fall apart any second.

Here the kid and I are, both representing!

This is the Saturn I, the precursor to the Saturn V:

Here's the Pathfinder, a Shuttle test simulator, fully stacked with its solid rocket boosters and external tank:

This happy gal that's smiling at you is the Shuttle Training Aircraft, that mimicked the handling of the shuttle so that astronauts could practice:

Here I spotted some sisters reconnecting after their time apart:

Will would NOT let me talk any smack about Wernher Von Braun. Here's his office:

Here's a model of a rocket ship that he drew when he was a kid!

Even though I didn't have total buy-in from the family, I insisted on buying the Marshall Space Flight Center tour. I wanted to see where the Redstone was tested!

Here is the rest of my family humoring me:

But they didn't know that we were going to see THIS place!!!

You can't see through the glass very well, but on the other side of the window is the ground control for the ISS Payload Operations. They're managing the ISS's payload RIGHT NOW. See that video screen on the right? That's a live feed to an astronaut on the ISS RIGHT NOW, messing around with the payload doing something or other.

I don't need to brag anymore than I already have, but I'm just gonna tell you that he waved into the camera at us.

I won't go on and on about everything we saw there, but y'all--it was FASCINATING. Worth the price of the tour tickets right there.

Did you know that you can sign up on the NASA website for an email alert so that you can watch the ISS pass overhead? It tells you when you can watch, based on your zip code. I'm just waiting for my email alert now!

We're really glad to be back together!

Ah, HERE'S the Redstone testing site!

Here's the bunker where they watched the tests through a periscope stuck out of the roof:

They're still doing a lot of testing of various pieces of equipment at Marshall. The Space Launch System is coming!!!!!!!

The last stop on the tour was Environmental Control and Life Support. On the ISS, it's important to drink your pee:

Whenever I saw an Aviation Challenge logo, I made Will pose with it. Because of course!

We're almost done with my breathless retelling, I promise. Just the Saturn V Hall left to see!

I LOVE the Saturn V inside the hall. You're right up next to it, and walking it is the best way to really understand how freaking big it is:

This is cool. When scientists fled Nazi Germany, they had to leave their plans behind or destroy them. They didn't want to destroy their life's work OR give it to the Nazis, so they buried it all in a cave and sealed it in. Later, the Army actually sent a mission to recover those materials. This plan is one of those recovered items:

Here's what they built with it. You can see the plan on its left:

Here is an extra set of suits for the Apollo 1 astronauts. Heartbreaking:

Don't forget to notice every now and then how BIG Saturn V is!

Here's the Apollo capsule with its parachute attached:

And here are three young astronauts taking a test flight:

Look, they made it to the moon!

Aha! I finally found a Space Academy logo to represent in front of!

And finally, I bought us matching caps, the better to be Space Camp Buddies with:

I think I've told you before, many times, about my firm belief that people should do hard things. Kids should do hard things. Academically gifted kids, like this one of mine,  should do hard things. I know you're thinking, "Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, duh" but when you're talking about an academically gifted kid, that's not as obvious as it sounds. A lot of things come easily to an academically gifted kid. Her younger sister had to LEARN to read. Will, though, just did it. No effort. She writes essays, no effort (until I come in with the red pen, of course...). She thinks her math is hard, but she doesn't know that I'm making her do the most rigorous math curriculum on the market. She breezes through grammar, geography, literature, science. History is hard, but that's because she's an eighth-grader studying for the AP exam.

For a kid like that, everything could be easy. She could breeze through her schoolwork if I let her, breeze through an entire 12 years of school, graduate with all As and no experience of struggle. And then where would she be the first time something is hard? The first time she has to struggle to learn? The first time that she's not the smartest girl in the room? I've seen that--experienced that, if I'm going to be honest--and I don't like it.

So instead, I make the kid take the SATs when she's just turned 13. I have her pick an AP exam and learn the material in the eighth grade. Like you'd do with any other kid, I encourage her to explore her passions, even the ones it's clear she's not "gifted" in--she doesn't have to be the best horseback rider or ice skater in the room, and she needs something she can enjoy without being automatically good at. Like you'd do with any other kid, when she's interested in something, I encourage her to go for it, and I push her to challenge herself and stretch herself for it. I tell her to go for the scholarship. I won't let her give up when applying for it gets hard. I prepare her for not being the best, help her come up with a Plan B to achieve her dream anyway--hey, if we put aside some money every month, if you take up a couple more chores every week, we could budget to send you to Space Camp NEXT year if you don't get a scholarship this year, and you can always apply for the scholarship again next year, too.

But man, when all that hard work pays off? When she works harder at something than she's ever had to work AND achieves it? And when what she achieves isn't just another good test score or certificate or check, but an actual, genuine experience of a lifetime? Something that encourages her to become braver and stronger and try even harder? Something that inspires her to dream even bigger next time?

Well, you can see why that's something that I can't seem to stop myself from bragging about. It was a lesson well and truly learned, this adventure of hers.

P.S. Want to follow along with more resources and adventures of homeschooling and traveling the world with two half-feral and awesome kids? Follow my Craft Knife Facebook page!